Left 4 Dead Review (+12)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Left 4 Dead is a game published by Valve and released in North America on November 18 2008. Using the source engine and a very cunning AI director the game produces the feel of a zombie apocalypse quite well albeit a little cartoony at times. The AI director places items and zombies randomly throughout the levels, which increases replay value. The game features 4 campaigns with 5 levels each, single player offline (campaign only), online cooperative, versus mode, and survival mode.

Characters (86/100)

+ Well made dialogue+ Lovable and relatable+ Hard to get tired of– Zoey can get annoying– They're squishy– Clothes can make them look like zombies at times (sorry Bill)

Infected (90/100)

+ Easily Identifiably+ Make the game fun and challenging+ Fun to play as– Hunters can leap an infinite number of times in succession– Tanks can stop you from reloading/taking pills even against walls– Witches are sometimes put directly in your path and must be killed

Level Design (73/100)

+ They're pretty long+ They're easy to memorize ergo hard to get lost+ Can't fall to your doom unless you want to– Very linear (needs entire level randomization instead of just item randomization)– Easy memorization leads new players having a hard time keeping up with seasoned players– It can be possible to get stuck in a level if you step on piles of many physics items (items that can move) or in some cases on locations where physics items are touching nonphysics items (items that can't move)

Items (79/100)

+ Weapons for all kinds+ Good amount of items you can shoot to explode+ Well thought out throwing weapons– Not a large amount or variety of weapons– No body armor or the like– Pills are either overly abundant, or inexplicably absent (a lot of times a run through the hospital will yield zero pills)

Multiplayer (85/100)

+ 3 well made modes+ Increases replayability+ A lot of fun– Griefers, lone rangers, newbies, oldies, idlers, etc can all bring a game down– No versus survivor mode (it would be cool if the survivors could respawn as well in this case)– Sometimes servers shut down without warning or the server is modded in a way you won't like (though I had fun on one with super low gravity and near invincible zombies)

Add modding the game (PC only) and factor in the ever awesome (and sometimes quite malicious) AI director the overall result is quite well.

All in all I believe overall Left 4 Dead deserves a solid 95/100

Seeing as the average was 83/100 that means the value added by bringing these things together is +12.